A future lost
by DiscordantSymphony
Summary: When he was born she had sworn to protect her brother, she failed him. She wouldn't do it again, not this time.
1. Chapter 1

A future lost

Chapter One

When she first arrived she knew that she had to see him, she had to see that what she saw in her vision was true. That he was here, happy and healthy and alive. So, so, so alive.

And he was, bright green eyes that never knew pain or fear, eyes that never welled with tears as he heard the witch hunters on TV chanting their slogans of fear and hate, eyes that were never glassy or unfocused due to the amount of drugs coursing through his young body to try and ease the pain he was in and fend of death for just one more day.

Eyes that never looked at her.

Her baby brother.

She remembered how he was born, Mom hadn't wanted to leave the manor and so Dad and Aunt Prue had taken her upstairs while she watched TV in the sunroom with the volume turned all the way up to drown out of the sounds of her mother's screams.

Seven hours later her Aunt Prue had come down to take her upstairs, as soon as she walked into her parents bedroom her eyes landed on the little bundle that was in her mother's arms. She walked over to the bed and her dad lifted her up and placed her next to her mother so she could look at her brand new baby brother.

That was also the day that she learned that love at first sight was definitely a real thing.

Green eyes that were looking at everything in the room stopped when they landed on her. He cooed at her and she glanced up at her mother, when she nodded she reached down and took him into her arms.

She swore to herself that she would never let anything happen to him.

They grow up together and played together, snuck cookies of the cooling rack when their mother wasn't looking, spent afternoons playing in the backyard with their dad and went on trips to the museum with their aunt.

They fought of course, like all siblings did. But at the end of the day they always forgave one another, always.

Their life wasn't perfect, the world was filled with both monsters and men that wanted to kill them, the next generation was being raised to hate people like them.

But she was little girl, when she had her family and the sun was bright she found that she really didn't care all that much.

But the sun can't stay up forever and every little girl needs to grow up.

She was a little over ten years old when her brother got sick, really sick. He couldn't keep any food down and he was always in pain from bad stomach aches. The day after he had a session of not being to keep anything but water down their parents decided to take him to the hospital.

They would never take him back out again.

She was so young, she didn't think she was, she was ten and she knew everything about the world. Except why her brother was sick. The doctor's called it an illness that she never bothered to remember or even look up. She didn't care, it only had one name to her…

Brother killer.

She couldn't vanquish an illness and despite his best efforts her father couldn't heal it and so they spent nearly half a year watching her baby brother slowly but surely die.

She was with him when he went, he was asleep and she was holding his hand and he breathed, a weak, pitiful little thing and then…he was just gone.

She didn't scream or cry, it was almost as if her body had went into shutdown. As if her mind couldn't not process that her baby brother was really, gone. Was actually dead.

It all fell apart from there.

Her father spent more and more time with his charges and her mother spent most days crying up in her room and when she stopped crying she spent most of the time on autopilot, going through the motions.

The witch hunting got worse, any shops that sold any kind of herbs were getting burned down to the ground, probes developed by the military were being used to scan for magic and armed squads of police were now joining in the witch hunts.

The world was falling apart but she didn't care much, her world had fallen apart years before.

One night when she was walking home, she had a vision. Of a better world, a world where her baby brother had grown big and happy and healthy. When the vision cleared she knew that she had a new purpose, a new goal.

It took her months to gather all the necessary ingredients for her spell without drawing too much attention to herself. She worked all through the night to prepare and when it was done she was ready to go.

She thought about telling her parents and her aunt about what she was going to do but she discarded the thought as soon as it entered her head, she might have cared about her parents once but she didn't anymore. They hadn't cared about her in years.

And so, with no more delays she cast the spell.

It felt like the entire world shaking apart but it didn't last for long, a few seconds and it took her a moment to realise that anything had actually changed but she noticed sooner rather than later.

The attic was different, in her world it was different. Barebones and stripped and dusty and full of boxes filled with potion ingredients that her mother had stockpiled in case of emergency.

In this world or timeline or whatever it was practically furnish, sofas and chairs, tables and lamps and cabinets filled with jars of potion ingredients that had obviously been organised and sorted by a neat freak.

When she heard footsteps coming up the stairs she orbed out of the attic and winded up on the top of the golden gate bridge. There were so many cars out and it was so late, in her timeline there had been a curfew and no one had dared to break it for anything.

It had worked, she made it.

She spent the next few months in the shadows, watching and waiting and finding a place in this new world. She got a job and an apartment and even made a few friends who she didn't mind all that much.

But the most important thing that did in this timeline was watch this version of her family, watch this version of her baby brother.

They were all so happy, they weren't safe exactly of course. They were still witches and they still had to deal with demons and warlocks but they were safe in the mortal world, or at least as safe as the normal person was.

Her brother was four when he died and in this timeline he had made it to twenty-three, he was so tall. Taller than her.

And he was happy, which was all she had ever wanted for him. To be happy and safe and loved and in this timeline he was all three.

She loved this timeline already.

He had brothers and sisters, an older brother who was taller than him by a few inches, younger brother who looked to be about fifteen, another brother who looked like he was ten and another who looked to be about seven or eight.

He only had two sisters, a brown haired girl and blonde girl who looked like they were about collage age.

The blond had her name, but she wasn't her. She didn't even look like her, she was blonde to start off with and it wasn't a dye job.

She hated them all for being happy without her, why couldn't she have been born in this timeline, with seven little siblings and two loving parents and a safe mortal world to explore.

She loved them all, she loved how they laughed and cried and smiled and eat and she would do anything to join them, to be part of this family.

But she couldn't.

And so, with a tearful sigh Melinda Wyatt began to walk away from the manor, her footsteps the only sound that could be heard in the cold dark night.

End of Chapter One

 **(A/N, please read, review, follow and favourite. This was originally going to be a story arc in my next generation series but I figured it stood on it's own well enough but I did decided to leave in the other siblings from that series.)**


	2. Chapter 2

A Future Lost

Chapter Two

It had been a moment of weakness, she knew that she shouldn't have done it but she couldn't help herself. She needed to see him and so she had walked into the restaurant and sat at the table. Even now she thought this was a terrible idea and it would just hurt her more in the long run but even so she couldn't help herself.

She had only meant to watch him from afar, just to see him it had been months since she had seen him having dinner with the rest of their, the rest of his, family and that was it. She had been so busy with work and trying to find a new place for herself in the world that she let the whole reason she had come slip from her mind.

She wouldn't let that happen again.

And so that was how she found herself sitting at the table in Halliwells, she knew that Chris sometimes worked as a waiter when they were understaffed so even though it was only a small chance it was the best chance she actually had of ever getting to speak to her brother.

She knew that her behaviour was more than a little creepy, she was basically stalking her brother and his family but she couldn't help it. She had only come to this world to be with her brother, for the longest time the only thing that kept her going was the thought of being reunited with Chris.

Speaking of her brother, he was walking towards her and he was dressed in a waiter's uniform. He glanced up at her and smiled pleasantly while tapping his pencil against a pad of paper. "Welcome to Halliwells, what I can I get you?"

Melinda didn't speak, she couldn't. All she could do was stared at her baby brother in numb disbelief, a part of her even now, months down the road, still couldn't believe that it had worked, that had arrived in her world where her brother hadn't died decades and decades before his time.

She took a minute to fully take in her grown up brother, he had died when he was four in her world but if her math was right then he should be roughly twenty-seven now as he had been born earlier in this timeline.

He was tall, a little over six feet tall but he seemed even taller to her given that she was only five foot herself, his hair was still brown but now it was gelled to spike up instead of the uncontrollable mess it had been when he was a child. His skin was now a healthy tan colour instead of the pale white it had been when he was a child, made even paler when he had been confined to that damn hospital for last few short months of his live.

His eyes were still green but they seemed...different. In her world they were bright, almost like emeralds when they caught the light but here they were almost the same colour as moss.

It made an ache settle in her gut, that one tiny difference hurt her in ways she couldn't imagine. It just proved that while this was a Chris, he wasn't her Chris. He was lost to her forever.

"You know, normally if someone stared at me this long I would be a little creeped out." Her brother's amused voice brought her out of her thoughts with a jolt, she looked up at him and saw that he was smiling gently. "But you seemed more freaked out by me, what's up? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Oh, sorry about that. You...you just look like somebody I knew." Melinda said as she brushed her hair behind her ears. "You're Chris Halliwell, right?"

"Yeah." Chris drawled as he folded his arms, now he looked a little concerned. "I am, how do you know that? Who are you?"

"I am journalist with the San Francisco Times and we're doing a story about family business, I know that your mother ran this restaurant and that Club P3 and I know your in line to take over for both for her and I would really like to interview you." Melinda explained as she fished her card out of her purse and handed it over. "My card."

It wasn't a complete lie, she did work as a journalist at the Times and she was looking for something to hand in but she had only come here for lunch but it hadn't occurred to her at the time she would need an explanation to how she knew his name, god she could be stupid sometimes.

The story idea wasn't a bad one but she would have to pitch it now and it might not go through, it was hardly the hard hitting thing her boss liked but that really didn't matter.

It would give her an excuse to talk with her brother.

Chris scanned his eyes across the card and a smirk danced across his lips. "Melinda Parker? Funny, I've got a sister called Melinda and a cousin called Parker." He sat down and slid the card back to her. "So, why me? There's got to be a lot of family business in the city, why me specifically?"

"Well, I know the most about you and you have three restaurants in there different cities which is quite unusual for a family business and you the heir to two family business and it's also a little different in that your a son inheriting two business from you mother, which is more rare than you might think. You would offer an interesting perspective I think." Melinda listed off her reasons, thanking her ability to think quickly and it was not the first time she had done so. "Plus, I'd like to get to know you better."

Chris laughed and shook his head and Melinda couldn't help but smile, it had been ages since she heard her brother laugh and it warmed her heart when she realised it sounded almost exactly like her Chris's, just a little deeper. "I'm flattered, but I am already seeing someone."

"No! nononono! That is not what I meant, at all!" Melinda yelled a mile a minute and she realised she had to calm down as now not only was Chris looking at her like she was a mad woman but so was the entire restaurant.

She took a breath to calm herself and tried again. "I'm seeing someone as well, I just meant that you seem really interesting and I could always do with another friend, I don't have that many. If not fine but I just think it would be nice. Don't tell me your someone who doesn't think that men and women can't be friends?"

"Course not!" Chris said before a thoughtful expression crossed his face. "Hell, why not? No publicity is bad publicity right? When do you want to do this interview?"

"Nine sound good?" Melinda suggested, it would give her time to suggest the story to her boss and get ready.

"Sure. See you then." Chris stood up and walked off.

Melinda grinned and stood up, not even caring that she hadn't gotten to get her order taken as she actually had wanted to eaten but that didn't really matter anymore, she would be able to eat tonight.

The important thing was now she had more opportunities to get to know her brother, she couldn't be happier!

She left the restaurant, whistling happily under her breath as she went.

* * *

Chris walked into his office and looked the door behind him, he sat down his desk and pulled out his phone and dialled a number, sighing in relief when it was answered.

"Wyatt, I think we've got a problem."

End of Chapter Two

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